The effects of Brexit on the emigration from Hungary to the United Kingdom

Lovassy Viktória (2019) The effects of Brexit on the emigration from Hungary to the United Kingdom. Külkereskedelmi Kar.

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I have chosen to write my thesis on a quite recent topic, the withdrawal process of the United Kingdom from the European Union, more precisely, the effects of the mentioned on the emigration from Hungary to the United Kingdom. In this part of my thesis, I would like to provide explanation on my topic choice, present the way I conducted my research, and give brief hypotheses about what might be the outcome of my research. In the following paragraphs, I would like to give a brief reasoning on why I have chosen this particular topic and why I am interested in exploring it. When considering subjects for my diploma work, firstly I wrote notes on a piece of paper about everything that interests me. Among the things that I have listed, the most outstanding and the one closest to my heart was traveling. My appreciation for traveling is in close connection with trying new things, exploring new places, getting familiar with other cultures and such. Since the greatest integration of the world, the European Union exists, traveling became more available and thus, I had the opportunity to go on quite a few trips and participate in the Erasmus Plus program as well. Besides that, I have always found the roots and history, the whole mechanism of the European Union interesting. Since Hungary joined the Integration in 2004, not only traveling has become more available for everyone, but it was the beginning of free movement of workforce as well. Around 2011, after the huge economical and financial crisis, more and more Central European people tried their luck elsewhere within the European Union. I find it really interesting how people move to different countries and start, let’s say, a new life there. These trends are changing with time and can be significantly affected by the constantly altering economic and political situations. My other huge interest is for the whole topic of Brexit. It is known, that the United Kingdom, especially England is a quite popular destination among young people when it comes to working abroad. The two main reasons behind this is the English language, and obviously, the high living standards. Since I am also interested in working abroad in different countries, in England as well, it might also 4 be beneficial to execute this research in order to gain information about how the legal procedures would look like regarding working abroad after the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. One other element of Brexit, which really interests me, is the opinion of people, especially the British people, on Brexit. I have recently read a book called ‘Brexit – Why Britain voted to leave the European Union’ by Harold D. Clarke, Matthew Goodwin and Paul Whiteley. This writing explores the voting campaigns that have lead up to the historical day of the vote in 2016. From this book, we can learn the people’s attitudes towards the main motives of Brexit, such as immigration, constantly changing with time. I highly recommend the above mentioned book for anyone interested in the sociological side of the reasons why the people of the United Kingdom chose to leave the European Union. The main parts of my thesis which cover the topics I would like to touch are the following: introduction of Brexit, introduction of the Hungarian migration tendencies, the UK’s current immigration laws, and how these are probably going to change with the exiting process, analysis of my online surveys and interviews, and finally, a summary of my findings. In order to execute my diploma work, I used several research methods recommended by my thesis advisor. I have carried out online researches, read books, articles and the news to introduce the whole being of Brexit to the readers. I mainly used online studies by Chris Moreh, a researcher and professor at the University of Southampton in England, to explore the Hungarian emigration trends, and gained statistical data from the Central Statistical Office of Hungary. As the active part of the research, I conducted two online surveys. One for Hungarian people living in Hungary, and the aim of this questionnaire is to find out how high is the willingness of people to emigrate to the United Kingdom, and if Brexit has any impact on their decision. The other one is for Hungarians who already live in the United Kingdom. The aim of the second questionnaire is to learn what actions people would take when Brexit happens. Might they take no action, might they consider returning to the home country, or might they make steps to acquire British citizenship. I interviewed a few people as well, in order to gain individual views, opinions and attitudes towards Brexit. Amongst the people I interviewed, there are young people just after their studies starting to work in England and a young adult in his early 30s having been working in England for several years. 5 In the last paragraphs of this chapter I would like to set up a few hypotheses as potential results of my research. As a first hypothesis, I would like to assume that Brexit will have significant impacts on Hungarian people’s emigration intentions to the United Kingdom. One of the main motives of the UK’s departure from the EU is British people’s dissatisfaction and fear towards the remarkably high number of immigrants arriving in the country each year. One of the aims of the British government is to tighten their immigration policies with the reason of establishing a higher level of control on their borders, in order to prevent the arrival of, for instance terrorists, to Britain. The increasing number of Central-Europeans arriving to the UK has also been a worrying matter amongst the British population recently. Due to this issue, Britain might be introducing a point-based immigration system – just like the one in Australia - in the near future, which would support the method of allowing labour into the country depending on skills and qualifications. Knowing this, we can assume that Hungarians who earlier had the intention to move to the United Kingdom in the future, might be reconsidering their decision. If this hypothesis will prove to be correct, we may soon be experiencing a decline in the emigration tendencies of Hungarians to the United Kingdom. On the contrary, the alternative hypothesis assumes that there will not be any substantial changes in Hungarian emigration tendencies. The reason to this might be that we are quite early in the processes of Brexit, thus significant alterations can only be expected after the end of the transition period, in 2021. It might well be the case that people do not feel any impacts of the UK’s withdrawal yet, so it might not be too likely that their intentions to move to Britain will decrease in the upcoming year. The second hypothesis is that we will experience a higher rate of Hungarians living in the UK returning to the home country. They might feel unsafe in Britain after Brexit, regarding jobs or the possible increase of hostility of British people towards immigrants. In this case, the alternative hypothesis is that Hungarians will sort of ignore the possible consequences – or there will not be any substantial consequences - of Brexit, and stay in Britain regardless. Hopefully, this hypothesis as well as the previous one, will be proved or disavowed with the help of the online surveys and in-depth interviews. 6 Within the frames of the third hypothesis, I would assume that the number of citizenship applications of Hungarians will be rising during the transition period and afterwards. This can be due to new policies regarding foreign citizens living in the United Kingdom, thus people might feel safer with the acquired citizen status. The alternative hypothesis is that there will not be a remarkable change in the number of citizenship applications, but the statement of the null hypothesis is more likely to be the case, in my opinion. With the help of the two online questionnaires and the three interviews that I conducted, the objective is to test my hypotheses and draw up a thorough conclusion on the researched topic. At this point I would like to mention, that the execution of the research was closed around the date of 15th of March 2019, thus the latter Brexit events will not be mentioned in this study. However, before I introduce the sections of my primary research, firstly I would like to provide a detailed overview about the phenomenon of Brexit, which will be included in the following chapter.

Magyar cím

A Brexit hatása a Magyarországról való kivándorlásra és letelepedésre az Egyesült Királyságban

Angol cím

The effects of Brexit on the emigration from Hungary to the United Kingdom

Intézmény

Budapesti Gazdasági Egyetem

Kar

Külkereskedelmi Kar

Tanszék

Nemzetközi Gazdaságtan Tanszék

Tudományterület/tudományág

NEM RÉSZLETEZETT

Szak

Nemzetközi Gazdálkodás (angol nyelven)

Mű típusa: diplomadolgozat (NEM RÉSZLETEZETT)
Kulcsszavak: Brexit, Kivándorlás, Hatásvizsgálat, Magyarország, Egyesült Királyság
Felhasználói azonosító szám (ID): Turányi Nóra
Rekord készítés dátuma: 2019. Ápr. 29. 11:17
Utolsó módosítás: 2020. Máj. 05. 09:39

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